Larry Brody: Getting to Know the Thai Kaeng

A rare calm moment from The Fantastic Friends Episode 1

by Larry Brody

A typically tense moment from the newest version of the Sangre De Cristo teaser

As many of you already know, I’m a partner in a Thai animation studio start-up called Southeast Asia Animation. SEAA is the home of a group of Thai animators calling themselves the Thai Kaeng and their Big Boss, a 17 year old genius currently living in the leafy green state of Oregon.

In as short a logline as I, as SEAA’s Senior Advisor, can give it, Thai Kaeng Anime is a combination of new ideas and deliberately old school methodology geared to achieve two purposes – the entertainment and amusement of the audience and the fulfillment of its creators’ need to function as true artists.

In other words, the Thai Kaeng isn’t just sitting around drawing and writing, its using drawing and writing and all that to meditate and become one with the universe, while at the same time conjuring up the craziest, funniest, scariest, bloodiest stuff its members can get jammed into their brains from out there in the void.

The SEAA website hasn’t yet officially launched, but once again I’m here to ask you to take a look at what’s there. So far, the previews of SEAA’s two animated series, The Fantastic Friends and Sangre De Cristo have been very well received. The FF sample has over 35,000 views, and the original trailer for SDC has about 34,000.

Recently, the Thai Kaeng put two more videos on its site at http://seaa.media. The first is a revised version of the Sangre De Cristo trailer, incorporating suggestions made by TVWriter™ visitors (including Westworld writer-producer Danny Thomsen – hiya, Dan!) . The second is a sneak peek at Episode 1 of The Fantastic Friends. They’re quite different from each other and yet, by most U.S. television standards, equally, erm, well, insane.

The Fantastic Friends Pilot Sneak

The Sangre De Cristo Revised Trailer

Like before, I’d consider it a personal favor from you out there to me stuck in this tiny box, if you’d take a look and tell me whatcha think.